Exhibition: April 4th to May 31st, 2010Closing Reception: May 20th, 2010At the UAS +15 Gallery

"This series started with a chance remark, a phrase we have likely all heard or said: 'She has such beautiful bone structure.' It's not always a flattering comment about someone, so I started wondering what if our bones were beautiful, not in the sense of the wonder of the human body's design, or as a perfect armature, but as decorated objects themselves. To most people, body parts bring an image to mind of gore, decomposition, murder or war, abandoned bodies and tortured souls. To some they are merely frameworks, scientific bases to build on, yet to others therein lies a beauty of form in the abstract. This work is not necessarily meant to be 'pretty', but seeks to emanate a sense of loss; warmth; familiarity; even humour. So many common phrasings originate with the body: 'beautiful bone structure', 'thin-skinned', 'all-legs', 'air-head', 'eye-candy', 'bleeding-heart', 'body politic'---since I love word-play and puns, it seemed natural for me to explore those cues through art. Over the past year I have been exploring interpretations of the human form in textiles and textile-techniques. The Artist's Body is a personal odyssey, with colour and line depicting the rhythms and paths my own has taken. Personal symbols radiate across each piece, showing directions I feel I am taking as I return to the basics of my stitch history. Cloth--like skin, bone, and organ--can be soft or hard depending on its treatment and use. As with fabric, we can stitch body parts together to mend or alter. Our very being is created from fiber, our bodies a network of threaded veins and seamlessly knitted bones.Each body part presents itself as a separate entity in this series. As I've worked through this collection, it's less about figurative realism and more about emotion and the sense of what's hidden from ordinary senses."Artist St